I said 4 months ago that I would leave for mapping and other important stuff, and now that I got back yesterday for the first time seriously again... I mean I couldn't believe what I saw. It was Skyrim and there were like what, 25 players online? This was at Peak houres for Europe and America.

I barely saw some people I knew, like a looot of new faces but almost no old ones. I asked around and according to some fellow steam friends of mine it appears a lot of veterans and dedicated players left in the time I was gone.

That's ok, but it doesn't fill the servers anymore. I know there are exams but then again I don't think that justifies the extra-low population. It's so low it can't be just that.

The only thing I can clealy see, and really clearly I mean objectively, is that many mappers I know have moved on to CS:GO. Both playing and mapping. I can't believe that ZE hasn't found a solution yet to ship legitly to CS:GO. I actually moved on to CS:GO ever since I started de_winter_forst 2 years ago near the ultimate start of GO.
For mapping CSGO Source it is such a joy over the older Source Engine that I could barely defend staying at CSS Source. Yet, I felt like I should have made a ZE map for CS:S just to support this awsome community that... Well that seems to have dissappeared.

Isn't it time to start looking for a decent way to ship over to CS:GO? I can't believe that the knockback values cannot be changed. How couldn't you change it so that zombies actually get shot back, or get slowed down by fire? Not only that, but for mappers and for players alike the new engine will give a fresh coat over what we're used to in Hammer.

I still intend to finish my currently not-released map, but if the population remains like this, it might have gone to waste. Well, not to waste since I build it in 3DS Max which gives me the opportunity to export 2 version (one for CSS and one for CSGO) in a matter of minutes, but yea... I think ZE communities should reach to Valve and the original developers behind CS:GO to start supporting our mod the correct way.

In my experience the server is dominated by just a few maps during peak times. These get really old once a majority of the player base are experts at it. I'm not only referring to mako, it's predator, mountain, and a few others. New maps do get released but after a few days they're forgotten. I'd definitely like to see a few more quality "movie" maps as they seem to draw lots of people.

Yeah, I agree. The game is getting older but I haven't seen any good cs:go ZE servers at the same quality ours is.

That's mainly because the CS:GO developers have not given any support whatsoever for the desired settings for ZE, which means it is still unplayable. If just a few settings where actually corrected, it would make ZE possible on GO just like it is on CS:S. It just has to happen IMO.

That's mainly because the CS:GO developers have not given any support whatsoever for the desired settings for ZE, which means it is still unplayable. If just a few settings where actually corrected, it would make ZE possible on GO just like it is on CS:S. It just has to happen IMO.

CS:GO is a good game in the competitive nature, it's not directly focused at mods. I've tried ZE on GO once, it feels very weird. A standalone ZE could work using the Steam Greenlight thingy.

1.6 is one of the most played games in Steam and it's a very old game. CS:S will still live on a few years, but game mods will become less active. Some people have gotten ZE on the frontpage of r/gaming out of a miracle, though.

CS:GO is a good game in the competitive nature, it's not directly focused at mods. I've tried ZE on GO once, it feels very weird. A standalone ZE could work using the Steam Greenlight thingy.

1.6 is one of the most played games in Steam and it's a very old game. CS:S will still live on a few years, but game mods will become less active. Some people have gotten ZE on the frontpage of r/gaming out of a miracle, though.

I was talking about a Standalone ZE version for some time. I'm going to see to which extent this is possible. But it would only work on Source I believe. I have heard of someone looong ago that wanted to get ZE to UDK, but it really, really sounded like a bad idea xD

With a standalone mod we could ship custom weapons and zombie models and stuff, but still keep the system intact. It's entirely possible to make a mod on the CS:GO engine (which is sharing the same stuff as Portal 2, L4D2 and Alien Swarm) but then we have to do everything over again (like I said, custom weapons, skins etc, implementing the system etc). We wouldn't need to rely on SourceMod as we could ship CSS settings as the standard settings with alteration of some code on the physics etc so that afterwards they can't be broken by stupid updates etc.

there will be a bunch of kids that will complain or not know mechanics.

There are already a bunch of kids who complain or don't know stuff in CSS -.-

I remember a time it'd be 2am and pF would have 64/64, as I have always suggested, we should take examples from GFL, ban mountain, mako, minas tirith and convoy and make them maps only for weekends, I want you people to go to the Stats tab in the upper part of the forum page and click on the ZE Stats tab (or here http://stats.plaguefest.com/css3 ) and tell me when will be the day you won't see mountain escape extended for one hour or minas tirith in that map chart.

Just look, Mako wasn't played yesterday at any single hour because haters plague the server and they prefer icecap escape over mako (icecap can be considered the only map in pF where they can go 6-0) while mountain escape was already played at the time I typed this, it will be played later on and be extended again for the sake of not letting makofags play mako, or hell, not being able to play any map that is not in our rotation.

If we were to move to Gmod that is the same problem as CSS because it's still the same old engine.

True, but I'd assume it would get support for the newer branches/games. It has in the past at least. Also, doesn't it have like ridiculous resource limits (compared to css?) not to mention the customization that can be done per map/mode would be the highlight.
But I'd still prefer a more popular game(ala csgo), one that has a better suited playerbase than gmod

Either way, was PF alive during July 2013? I mean summer time and school time isnt the same thing.
I was the one that nominated Skyrim and skyrim is known to kill the server these day which go from 40-50 players to 10-20 players.
Though I rarely see issue where server are full or overcrowded forcing people to buy donator to join, which was the case before the summer started.

I am currently on vacation. I was technically suppose to be working while that map was playing, it was before the Peak hour.
But indeed Peak hour during summer isn't the same thing as 4 months ago...

But indeed there no increase of players to CSS thus only old player will be coming to ZE server.
I still believe after summer over, it will restart being popular for another year...

You normally only need about 5-8 players that can really lead and the rest of the players are fillers.
Lately we have a hard time at getting 3-4 players that can lead thus the only map that can be beated are...
The easy map or maps that are overplayed.

Skyrim we haven't beated lv3 in over 4 months and 95% of the time we can't even get them to beat lv1 as those who lead tend to either push people to defend and no one get the triggers or get triggers and no one defend or someone edge.

Anyway, we will know in 2 months if the server restart getting crowded or not.

There are already a bunch of kids who complain or don't know stuff in CSS -.-

I remember a time it'd be 2am and pF would have 64/64, as I have always suggested, we should take examples from GFL, ban mountain, mako, minas tirith and convoy and make them maps only for weekends, I want you people to go to the Stats tab in the upper part of the forum page and click on the ZE Stats tab (or here http://stats.plaguefest.com/css3 ) and tell me when will be the day you won't see mountain escape extended for one hour or minas tirith in that map chart.

Just look, Mako wasn't played yesterday at any single hour because haters plague the server and they prefer icecap escape over mako (icecap can be considered the only map in pF where they can go 6-0) while mountain escape was already played at the time I typed this, it will be played later on and be extended again for the sake of not letting makofags play mako, or hell, not being able to play any map that is not in our rotation.

Actually I do support this claim...
I also wish that minas and a few other map to be moved to maybe weekend only or time restriction or maybe during peak hours only...
There are maps that are pretty unbeatable when the server isn't crowded enough.

I don't think a lot of you realise people grow up and start their lives, not being able to always be on ZE or any game for that matter. Shit happens. Sorry that this is your first time dealing with it but I have seen it happen multiple times in all the years I've been here.

See the problem with ze on PF is, people cant defend or dont want to, or just simply trolls - nominating/voting for maps no one wants to play. For example Skyrim, no one wants to play skyrim on PF anymore bcs. like i said Team sucks (most of the time 98%) it gets frustrating failing over and over again. And if we get a decent team, we went to this shit called "mountain_escape" and all the good players leave. Me personally i fell the same, dont get me wrong here i love ZE on pF, it`s just the majority of people that makes me and much others sad.
My experience +
Another example: "MAKO" this is the only map where good people seems to join but, they left right after they "win" or the map is "over" (This cause a server drop up to 40-50%), unless we are playing something like "predator.." right after soo they stay and keep the server alive. It makes no sense playing something like predator/minas etc... before mako cuz no one want to join the fail. This sounds very sad i know but it is the truth. (please correct me if im wrong).
But the anti mako army on this server is the reason why we will never beat such great maps like "minas - pirates - predator - skyrim..." again
Ohh shit i cant even remember when we last time beat something like minas or skyrim. . .
And dont let me even start about the Spectator problem here

I would make more points, but i think this is all you need to know
Dont judge me it`s just my experience
BTW typing with an tablet sucks ^^

I don't think a lot of you realise people grow up and start their lives, not being able to always be on ZE or any game for that matter. Shit happens. Sorry that this is your first time dealing with it but I have seen it happen multiple times in all the years I've been here.

of course people come and go thats for sure.
But other server are 24/7 full
soo thats not true.

I doubt CS:GO has anything to do with ZE getting old overall (in fact, if any, I'd blame the lack of new content being put out which causes people to lose interest after playing the same things over and over and over and over ad infinitum), but there is an attempt to port the gamemode to GO (in which I'm helping, I found a little workaround for the knockback which seems to go well enough for classic styled maps but is still to be tested on harder/more intense maps). If/when we get somewhere, we'll probably publish everything (I've insisted on everything I do/help with being open because at early stages I believe it's better for as many communities to be able to help as possible), and there is 1 (soon to be 2) servers going with the thingies. (EDIT2: I've seen lots of servers/people going by the excuse that ZE on GO isn't good to justify that they don't even try to do stuff. That attitude will really get the mod nowhere, so it's pointless. I felt like pointing that out and the fact that I hate that GO makes you feel like a fatass with its retarded movement)

CS:GO aside, what's happened is that either ZE got annoying or boring (as per Kloud's post).

PF died and ZE as a whole is just a giant circlejerk, in other words, it sucks. CSS is an old game and doesn't really get any advertisement anymore either.

About the whole standalone thing, the problem is that ZE is focused on rounds, whereas those survival games that have been sprouting lately do not depend on several players having to be on at a time wanting to play a very specific map/thing. People just do whatever they want and they can team up if they want, but they're not forced to. ZE wouldn't work as a standalone unless you had a giganormous community (which you don't) or you reduced the amount of players to play (which would make it boring, since Joris is complaining about 25 players being boring already and that amount or people would be boring for most of us).

ZE on GMod would have the 'good' (I guess) thing of having a fuckton of edicts to waste on pointless shit use, but as it stands it is another game in the process of fading away (just not as much as CS:S).

So yeah, dum de dum de dum de doom.

EDIT: I also ignored most of your posts because skimming through made me thing people were repeating things like cockatoos in the jungle, so I might have missed stuff.